But today it was all about Halloween. Marcel's was open twenty- four hours a day this week, and even at 7:30 a.m. the store was half full.
When Jessica and Sophie walked in, Jessica saw Rory behind the counter. Rory Bianchi was a kid from the old neighborhood who had always had a crush on Jessica, and ever since ninth grade they'd had the sort of relationship where the flirting went on but never went anywhere.
'The two prettiest girls in Philly,' Rory said. 'In my shop!'
'Hi, Rory!' Sophie said.
'Hey little darlin',' he said. 'Ready for the big night?'
Sophie nodded. A kid in a costume shop. Outside of a candy story, there was nothing cooler. Jessica remembered coming into Marcel's when she was a girl and Wonder Woman had been the rage.
'I have it for you right here,' Rory said.
Of all the costumes available — including Disney characters like Ariel from The Little Mermaid, which was Sophie's favorite movie — Sophie had picked something called the Snowflake Fairy. Jessica had tried to explain that Halloween was a fall holiday, but her words had fallen on deaf ears. Unlike her mother, Sophie loved the winter, especially snowflakes. Come December Sophie was endlessly cutting them out of construction paper and dotting the house with them.
'Do you want the wings and the wand, too?' Rory asked.
It was a dumb question, but Jessica looked at Sophie anyway. Sophie seemed to be in a fairy trance, the reflection of white satin in her big brown eyes.
'Sure,' Jessica said.
'I take it you'll want the tiara as well.'
Jessica took out her credit card as fast as she could, in case there was anything else.
Sophie floated out to the parking lot, still in a daze, the dress clutched tightly in her hands, as if Monica Quagliata might be lurking behind the next SUV — Monica with designs on the Snowflake Fairy costume.
When they got to the car, Sophie supervised the hanging of the costume on the hook in the back, pronounced it safely stowed for the few-mile journey. She slipped into the seat next to it, buckled in.
Before Jessica could start the car, a family crossed the street in front of them — mom, dad, two boys, two girls. Jessica looked over at Sophie.
'Do most of your friends have brothers and sisters?' Jessica asked. It was a rhetorical question, but one that Jessica needed to ask to get the conversation started.
Sophie didn't give this too much thought. She just nodded.
'Do you ever wish you had brothers and sisters?'
A shrug. 'Sometimes.'
'What would you think about having a brother?'
'A brother?'
'Yeah.'
'A boy?'
Jessica laughed. 'Yeah. A boy, sweetie.'
Sophie thought for a moment. 'Boys are okay. A little bossy, but okay, I guess.'
Jessica dropped Sophie off at school, stopped at Old City Coffee on Church Street. Outside, she picked up an Inquirer and a free copy of The Report, Philly's sleaziest tabloid — and that was saying something. As expected, the current spate of murders was splashed across the cover.
Philly Noir, the Geometry of Vengeance, screamed the headline.
Jessica tossed the Report in the trash, tucked the Inquirer under her arm. She got into her car, wondering how Byrne was faring.
Have you found them yet? The lion and the rooster and the swan? Are there others?
What did Christa-Marie Schцnburg have to do with all this?
She checked her cellphone. No calls from Byrne.
The primary role of the Department of Human Services was to intervene and protect neglected, abused or abandoned children, as well as to guarantee their well-being when there were immediate threats or impending dangers in their lives.
The Children and Youth Division provided youth and family-centered services to more than 20,000 children and their families each year.
Although the main offices were located at 1515 Arch Street there were various facilities throughout the city — temporary shelters and foster-care centers.
Jessica arrived at Hosanna House, a stand-alone brick building on Second Street. She signed in and walked to the day room at the back. She was immediately assaulted by the sound of a dozen toddlers in full morning mania. The place smelled like orange juice and crayons.
Carlos sat at a table with two little girls and a young woman of about twenty. He wore a red cardigan. He looked adorable.
Jessica watched him for a few minutes. Kids were unbelievably resilient, she thought. Just two weeks earlier this little boy's life had been hell on Earth.
But Jessica knew enough, had seen enough cases of abused and neglected children to know that many times there was residual grief and anger and fear. Most of the people she had arrested in the past five years were, almost to a man or woman, products of broken homes.
Carlos looked up and saw her. He got out of his chair, rocketed across the room, and threw his arms around her. He ran back, got a piece of paper from the table, ran back to Jessica, handed it to her.
It was a crayon drawing of a room, possibly the living room where Carlos had lived with his mother. There was something that looked like a chair and a table, and a woman in the corner with wild dark hair, eyes the size of her whole head. Patricia Lentz, Carlos's biological mother, had blonde hair, almost white.
It didn't take Jessica long to realize the figure in the drawing just might be her. Right behind her was a bright sun. Jessica's heart felt ready to beat its way out of her chest.
She looked at the table in Carlos's drawing. On the table was something that Jessica had no trouble recognizing. It was a two-yearold boy's rendition of a gun.
Jessica suddenly felt a paralyzing wave of sadness. She fought it.
'Can I have this?' she asked Carlos.
Carlos nodded.
'Stand up tall — let me look at you.'
Carlos stood at attention. His hair was combed, his face scrubbed. His sweater and pants looked new.
'This is a beautiful sweater,' Jessica said.
Carlos giggled, looked down, toyed with a button, perhaps thought better of messing with it. He was two. He knew his limitations.
'Where did you get your new clothes?'
Carlos turned toward the table, held out his tiny hand. Jessica walked over, hand in hand with Carlos. He sat down and tucked into a new drawing.
'Hi,' Jessica said.
The young woman at the plastic picnic table looked up. 'Hi.'
Jessica pointed to the drawing in her hand. 'This is pretty good for a two-year-old. I couldn't draw a straight line then. Still can't.'
The young woman laughed. 'Join the club.' She looked over at Carlos, smoothed his hair. 'He's such a beautiful boy.'
'Yes, he is,' Jessica said.
'I'd kill for those eyelashes.'
'Are you a counselor here?'
'No, no,' the young woman said. 'I just help out. I volunteer one day a week.'
Jessica nodded. The young woman had about her an air of competence, but also an air of sadness. Jessica felt the same way about herself sometimes. It was hard to see the things she saw every day and not be affected. Especially the kids. Jessica glanced at her watch. Her tour was starting.
'It was nice talking to you,' Jessica said.
'Same here.'
Jessica extended her hand. 'My name is Jessica, by the way.'
The young woman stood, shook her hand. 'Lucy,' she replied. 'Lucy Doucette.'
Chapter 47
When Jessica got to her car she felt another wave of melancholy. The drawing that Carlos had given her hit home. It would probably be a long time until those memories passed from his life. Was it too much for her and Vincent to be taking on?
As she unlocked the car door she turned to see someone approaching. It was Martha Reed, the director of Hosanna House. Martha was in her early fifties, plump but energetic, with clever blue eyes that missed nothing.
'Carlos looks well,' Jessica said. 'He looks… happy.' It was a stretch, bu
t Jessica couldn't think of anything else to say.
'He's adjusting,' Martha replied. Martha Reed had seen a lot of children in her time.
The woman then rummaged in her bag, took out her BlackBerry. She tapped around, got to her calendar. 'Can you and your husband be here today at around eleven?'
Jessica's heart thundered. They were getting their adoption interview. She'd known this moment was coming, but now that it was here she wondered how she was going to handle it. 'Oh yeah. We'll be here.'
Martha looked around conspiratorially. She lowered her voice. 'Between you and me, it looks really good. I'm not supposed to say that, but it looks good.'
Jessica drove out of the Hosanna House parking lot on a cloud. Before she could turn onto Second Street her cellphone rang in her hand. It was Dana Westbrook.
'Morning, boss. What's going on?'
'I just got the report on the Joseph Novak surveillance.'
'Okay.'
'We had a detective from West on him all night. Experienced guy, used to be in anti-gang, and did some task-force work with DEA. He sat on the apartment his whole tour. He said that from the time he came on until six this morning, there were no lights on in the place, no activity. About eight o'clock this morning he put on a Philadelphia Water Department jacket, grabbed a clipboard, got the super to let him in, and knocked on Novak's door. He got no answer, so he went around back, climbed the fire escape, looked in the window.'
'Was Novak home?'
'He was,' Westbrook said. 'He was sitting at his desk. It looks like, after he left the Roundhouse yesterday, he went home, shredded all of his sheet music and news clippings, and somewhere between six o'clock last night and eight o'clock this morning put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.'
Chapter 48
The amount of blood was staggering.
Jessica stood next to the stacks of crystal CD cases. The clear boxes were sprayed with blood and brain matter. Bits of shattered skull stuck to the valance over the curtains.
Joseph Novak's body was in the desk chair at an unnatural angle — the force of the blast had twisted his body in two directions. The upper third of his head was missing. Not missing, exactly, Jessica thought. It was dispersed around the wall and drapes behind him. The bullet had blasted out the window. There were two CSU officers across the street at that moment searching for the slug.
Was Joseph Novak their killer? He'd seemed unshakeable when he had been in for questioning, but why had he run the previous day? What did he have to hide?
The body was removed at ten a.m.
Jessica watched the CSU officers go through the motions. Now that the body was gone, the apartment-management company would soon contact one of the cleaning crews that specialized in crime-scene cleanup, a mini-growth industry during the past ten years. The world would move on.
The death had all the earmarks of a suicide, so there was probably not going to be a full-blown investigation. The weapon, a Colt Commander, had still been in Joseph Novak's hand when he was found, his finger curled inside the trigger guard.
Jessica would present her report to her boss, who would pass it along to the DA's office, who would then make a ruling. Unless there was any compelling evidence of foul play, this would be ruled a suicide and the homicide division of the PPD would not be involved any further.
But that didn't mean there was not a connection to the serial murders going on in the city.
Jessica got the attention of the two CSU officers who were dusting the doors and table for fingerprints.
'Can you guys give me a few minutes?'
The officers, always ready for a break, set aside what they were doing, walked through the door into the hallway, closed it.
Jessica slipped on gloves, turned the laptop to face the other side of the desk. The screen displayed a default screen saver. She touched the space bar, and in a second the screen came back to life. It was a Word document, with three short sentences.
Zig, zig, zig.
What a saraband!
They all hold hands and dance in circles…
Jessica was not familiar with the passage. Was this a suicide note? she wondered. She scrolled down on the trackpad but there was nothing else. The document was just the three lines. She glanced at the corner of the window. It had not been saved.
Was this a work in progress? Was this some sort of message from Joseph Novak, some riddle left behind for friends and family by which they might make some sense of his final, violent act?
Jessica had no idea. As much as she would have liked to take the laptop with her, she had no jurisdiction over it. Not yet, anyway. She would lobby the DAs office to establish a material-witness status for the late Joseph Novak, and perhaps she would get a chance to go through it.
She looked around the place. The silence was thick and oppressive.
Jessica had to be careful about looking through the contents of the computer. The homicide unit had recently received directives from the DA's office about needing court approval for doing anything with a computer that involved clicking a mouse or touching a keyboard. If there was something on the screen to be seen, in plain view, that was one thing. If it involved maximizing a minimized window, launching a program, or visiting a web page located in a history on a browser, that was something else.
A case against a man trafficking in child pornography had recently been tossed because the detective, knowing there were thousands of images on the man's hard drive, had opened a graphics program. It turned out that every time a program was launched, there was a log of the event and a record of the precise time it happened. If the suspect was in custody at that moment, the detective could not claim that the program was already open.
Jessica clicked over to the side bar. There was no harm in looking, as long as she didn't open any files or programs. She glanced at the contents of the drive. There was one file, saraband. doc. That was it. Other than that, there was nothing on the drive. No documents, no spreadsheets, no databases, no photos, music or audio files. It had all the earmarks of a drive that had been recently erased.
Any good computer-forensic lab would be able to tell when a drive had been formatted, and could usually find evidence of the files that were originally on the drive. Jessica was already formulating the case she would make to the DA's office to allow them to do just that.
In the meantime she would get a couple of warm bodies down here to canvass the building, just to see if Joseph Novak had had any visitors earlier in the day. If he had, maybe it could lead to a full-scale investigation of his death as something other than a suicide.
She took out her phone, checked her voicemail. Two messages.
When did she get two messages? Why hadn't it rung? She checked the side of the phone. With an iPhone, the switch to toggle from silent to ring tone was on the upper left, and was easily activated when you put the phone in your pocket. Too easily. The ringer had been off.
Jessica switched it back on, tapped the first voicemail message. It was from the man who was hoping to install the awnings on the new house. He wanted two grand. Dream on.
The second call was from an unknown caller. She played it.
'Detective Balzano, this is Joseph Novak.'
Jessica jumped to her feet. Her skin broke out in gooseflesh. She glanced behind her, at the dark sienna stains on the carpet and walls. She could still smell the cordite in the air, could taste the coppery airborne blood at the back of her throat. Joseph Novak's blood. She was listening to a message from the grave.
'I want to apologize for my behavior. I can't go on like this. There is more to this than you know. Much more. You don't know him. I cannot live with myself anymore.'
Jessica paused the message for a moment, paced the living room. Everything she looked at — the books, the CDs, the furniture itself — took on a new meaning.
She stopped pacing, tapped the button, continued the message.
'I hear him coming down the hall. Look in the cabinet above the range in the
kitchen.'
The message ended.
Jessica put her phone in her pocket, crossed the living room into the compact Pullman kitchen. She opened the cabinets above the range hood. There she found a dozen or so cookbooks — Mexican, Italian, Cajun. She pulled a few of them out, riffled the pages. Nothing. The second-to-last cookbook was labeled Home Recipes. She pulled it out. When she did, something fell on the floor. It was a slim leather-bound journal. The cover was worn and creased. She picked it up. Stuck in the front was an old photograph. It was Joseph Novak at fifteen or so, standing next to a beautiful cello. Jessica slipped the picture back in the book, opened it.
It was a diary.
June 22. The competition is this Saturday. But it is more than just a competition for first chair. We both know that. It is a competition for her. It will always be thus.
Jessica flipped ahead to the back of the journal. She read the final entry.
November 1. All Saints Day. It is done. I know now that I will be forever beholden to him. I will never be out of his shadow. For the rest of my life I will do his bidding. My heart is forever broken, forever in his hands.
Zig, zig, zig.
He is death in cadence.
Jessica closed the journal. She needed a warrant to search every square inch of this apartment, and she needed one fast. She put in a call to the DA's office, told them what she had, what she needed. She took the journal, intending to say it had been in plain sight, therefore not covered by the warrant. She stepped outside, locked the door. She told the two CSU officers they could return to the lab. She would call them when and if she needed them.
She walked across the street, grabbed a coffee-to-go at the diner, stepped into the parking lot behind. She called Byrne, got his voice- mail. She called Dana Westbrook, gave her a status report. Westbrook said she would send two other detectives from the Special Investigations Unit to aid in the search.
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